I thought I would add my experience to this. My second daughter was born 21 Sept 2000. She was pretty and cute, all the nice things one would want. By the time she was 6 months old I started to wonder about her, she seemed more "babyish" than she should have been. My Dr. blew me offf completely. At a year she had no teeth, still wasn't walking, and was not very verbal. She had said "mama", but then seemed to forget it. She did not jargon or "baby talk" at all but seemed to randomly blurt out whatever. The Dr. finally agreed to send her for screening. Her specialist eventually told me that something was not right with her, but he wasn't sure what and we would have to wait things out and see. We went to more doctors and were told she had mild cerebral palsy, that she had apraxia of speech, and that she might be autistic. We were told she wouldn't walk until 6 or 7 if at all, that she would never be potty-trained, and that she may not develop much functional speech. We were in Japan at the time (DH is in the USAF) and we decided that it would be best to request a medical relocation in part because I felt that her diagnosis was inaccurate. We came to Tinker AFB in Oklahoma. The pediatrician here agreed that she was not nearly as bad off as others had made things out to be, after-all she was walking at 15 months, saying a few more words ect. In fact, he believed there was nothing wrong with her at all. He refused to send her to any type of specialist because he didn't see the need. He went so far as to consel me about "abusing" my daughter by trying to find things wrong with her. During this time the vac/autism debate became a part of our lives as well. I certainly didn't want to add to the problem, and while I couldn't confirm that vac. were the cause of her autistic tendancies, I couldn't rule them out either. This became a point of contention between me and EVERYONE. Bear in mind that when I had my dd I already had a 2yo at home and was just 20. I was living in a foriegn country and had no help from family. Being young and having little formal education was grounds for all kinds of judgement from anyone and everyone. Almost a year ago I paid for Lauren to see a geneticist. He told me he didn't see any obvious syndrome but agreed to test her (mostly to shut me up). Turns out she has a rare chromosome deletion, so rare that only four other children have been documented to have it since 1980 and they all died before turning 1. I suspect that there are other children with the condition, they just aren't getting diagnosed. Anyway, I digress. I can understand the concern other parents have regaurding the correlation between Vac. and autism because it was definatly a concern for me, but in the end it WAS ruled out as the cause of my daughter's autism. Vaccines are helpful, they DO prevent many diseases. My advice to other's would be to err on the side of caution, but it is also important to recognize that there are likely several different causes of autism. The best thing anyone can do is educate themselves. There is nothing better you can do for a child than to make educated decisions regarding thier health.

(Although my oldest DS is 20 years old and didn't have 24 shots in 24 months....it's only in recent years that vax have gotten so ridiculously out of hand.)

I totally agree with this. I do think vaccines are important in the big picture... most people should be vaccinated in the interest of public health, but I don't think we should be giving SO MANY at such a young age. I know that when I was little, we maybe had a handful of shots by the time we were 2... nothing even close to what they give kids now, and many of those are just for "convenience"... like prevnar and CP.

Something interesting, that I hardly ever see people mention, is that if you delay shots, you often end up needing fewer in the series to gain immunity (since they are started at an older age), and you can still "finish" most of them around the same time as if you'd done them completely on schedule, and no vax is fully effective until you've completed the entire series....

So, to me, that pretty much tells me that most vax's done on babies are completely worthless. They aren't benefitting the child, only the Dr's who are making money off of it... I really think that's why some will choose to refuse to treat patients who don't vax - there is just no money in it for them.

DD has only had a couple vax's, and every time we go in I have to sign a waiver for the shots I am refusing - it's a hassle, but it's important to me to only get what I am comfortable with... and for the most part they are understanding, though I'm sure they'd be much happier if I'd just go ahead and vax on the schedule they want.